People relax in the warm weather in Regents Park in London.
Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty

Parts of the UK have been basked in sunshine on the country’s hottest day of the year so far.

The Met Office said the temperature had reached 27.6C at 2.27pm at Heathrow in west London on Saturday. That beat 2019’s previous warmest temperature of 25.8C, set in April.

1 June is considered to be the first day of meteorological summer in the UK.

Areas in south-east England enjoyed the best of the weather: Teddington in south-west London and Wisley in Surrey both recorded temperatures of 26.4C.

The temperature also hit 26C in High Beach, Essex, and 25.9C at Iver in Buckinghamshire.

Conditions could get even hotter in East Anglia on Sunday, with temperatures of 28C or 29C expected, but with a risk of thunder.

Met Office meteorologist Emma Smith said the hot weather was the result of the jet stream moving north and high pressure and heat coming from the continent in the south.

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She said on Saturday: “For this time of the year it should be 19 or 20C in London and in East Anglia it should be 18 or 19C, where we could see the hottest temperatures tomorrow.

“The last time we had 28C was August last year. It’s hot for the time of year.”

According to the Met Office, Saturday evening will remain dry in central and south-eastern areas. But elsewhere conditions will turn cloudier and breezier, with outbreaks of rain across Northern Ireland, spreading to Scotland, north-west England and west Wales by the morning.